“The Poor Taking Care of the Poor”

One of the fastest-growing fields is direct care: There are at least 3.6 million direct care workers in the US, not including an estimated 800,000 unreported workers, according to researchers. Vox had an article explaining the difficulty for caregivers to make a living wage. “In interviews, home care aides told Vox about the drawbacks of a booming field: aching backs, unstable schedules, second jobs, salaries low enough to qualify for Medicaid, and emotional burnout. Health care jobs might be a beacon of the new economy. But that doesn’t mean they’re good news for the workers who do them.”

“Many direct care workers — home health aides, nursing assistants, and direct support professionals like Rowe — struggle to make ends meet. Despite the physical and social skills required, direct care workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the nation, on par with fast-food workers. Rowe now makes $13.40 an hour — about half as much as he could be making as a mechanic — in a state where the median hourly wage is $18.”

“An estimated 46 percent of home care workers depend on Medicaid for their health coverage. Medicaid is also the largest payer of home and nursing care services, which means the poor are essentially taking care of the poor.”